but he lost the election, why? as the obama campaign predicted, the white portion of the electoral dropped. the president carried nearly 8 in 10 non-white voters including 71% of latinos, 73% of asian voters, a whopping 93% of black voters. it remains a real question whether the democratic nominee no 2016 will be able to hold the coalition closer. finally, lesson four. don't ignore the data. the polls matter, more of them are right than wrong. though public polling in the swing states showed the president ahead, the romney campaign sincerely believed until election day that romney would win. why? romney's pollsters assumed the electoral would be wider and older than it turned out to be. the enthusiasm numbers did favor them, but they didn't have enough voters. more than any cycle in recent memory, many republicans bought into an alternative poling universe. in 2016, much of the emphases in both parties will be to match and improve on the obama campaign's data-driven technological juggernaut. at the same time the le